For a little over a year, Uber has been operating its UberRUSH delivery service as a pilot program in New York City.

Today it’s making it an official part of the company, and expanding the courier service to Chicago and San Francisco, allowing customers to receive deliveries from local businesses.

UberRUSH competes directly with Postmates, delivering items like groceries, take-out food, and house supplies, albeit with a much larger fleet of cars on the road.

But unlike Postmates, when you open the Uber app, you won’t be flooded with a number of businesses that can deliver something to you.

Uber has integrated its delivery service with a number of top e-commerce platforms used by small businesses like Shopify, Clover, ChowNow, and delivery.com, which should help increase the number of local companies that utilize UberRUSH.

While it’s still early in the game for UberRUSH, the possibilities for Uber to truly succeed as a full-fledged delivery service are readily available.

With a fleet of cars that far exceed those operated by Postmates and Seamless, Uber could feasibly cut down on delivery times.

But with Amazon Prime Now still expanding and a number of other delivery startups sure to pop up in the future, UberRUSH is far from the last entry into this market.

What’s Next?

Will Uber eventually go the next step and compete with FedEx and UPS?

While pondering that thought, please consider monkey-see, monkey-do, hikes of near-identical amounts at FedEx and UPS.

FedEx Rate Hikes

In September, FedEx Announced Rate Hikes on the basis people are shipping larger, heavier packages, and residential deliveries have increased.

FedEx Ground and FedEx Home Delivery will increase shipping rates by an average of 4.9%.

What’s surprising is that UPS is again increasing its fuel surcharge effective Nov 2, 2015. Where FedEx’s latest announcement to increase fuel surcharges on 11/2/15 brought it more in line with what UPS charges today, the new UPS fuel pricing will again be higher than FedEx. It’s also important to note that UPS will implement the 2016 pricing on Dec 28, 2015, a full week ahead of FedEx. Finally, UPS Freight pricing is also increasing an average of 4.9 percent effective Oct 26, 2015. To date, FedEx has not announced increases at FedEx Freight.

The Fed cheers these rates hikes. No one else does but the shippers and new competitors like Uber. Just thinking: What would an Amazon-Uber pairing be able to do?